Poachers and Poaching
NOTE
These chapters originally appeared as articles in Macmillan's Magazine, the Cornhill Magazine, the National Review, the Gentleman's Magazine, the St. James's Gazette and the Pall Mall Gazette; and I have to thank the Editors and Proprietors of these periodicals for permission to reprint them. The chapter entitled "Water Poachers" is reprinted by permission from the Nineteenth Century.
As to the facts in the volume, they are mainly taken at first hand from nature.
CHAPTER I.
POACHERS AND POACHING.—I
The poacher is a product of sleepy village life, and usually "mouches" on the outskirts of country towns. His cottage is roughly adorned in fur and feather, and abuts on the fields. There is a fitness in this, and an appropriateness in the two gaunt lurchers stretched before the door. These turn day into night on the sunny roadside in summer, and before the cottage fire in winter. Like the poacher, they are active and silent when the village community is asleep.
Our Bohemian has poached time out of mind. His family have been poachers for generations. The county justices, the magistrates' clerk, the county constable, and the gaol books all testify to the same fact.
The poacher's lads have grown up under their father's tuition, and follow in his footsteps. Even now they are inveterate poachers, and have a special instinct for capturing field-mice and squirrels. They take moles in their runs, and preserve their skins. When a number of these are collected they are sold to the labourers' wives, who make them into vests. In wheat-time the farmers employ the lads to keep down sparrows and finches. Numbers of larks are taken in nooses, and in spring lapwings' eggs yield quite a rich harvest from the uplands and ploughed fields. A shilling so earned is to the young poacher riches indeed; money so acquired is looked upon differently from that earned by steady-going labour on the field or farm. In their season he gathers cresses and blackberries, the embrowned nuts constituting an autumn in themselves. Snipe and woodcock, which come to the marshy meadows in severe weather, are taken in "gins" and "springes." Traps are laid for wild ducks in the runners when the still mountain tarns are frozen over. When our poacher's lads attain to sixteen they become in turn the owner of an old flintlock, an heirloom, which has been in the family for generations. Then larger game can be got at. Wood-pigeons are waited for in the larches, and shot as they come to roost. Large numbers of plover are bagged from time to time, both green and grey. These feed in the water meadows through autumn and winter, and are always plentiful. In spring the rare dotterels were sometimes shot as they stayed on their way to the hills; or a gaunt heron was brought down as it flew heavily from a ditch. To the now disused mill-dam ducks came on wintry evening—teal, mallard, and pochards. The lad lay coiled up behind a willow root, and waited during the night. Soon the whistling of wings was heard, and dark forms appeared against the skyline. The old duck-gun was out, a sharp report tore the darkness, and a brace of teal floated down stream and washed on to the mill island. In this way half-a-dozen ducks would be bagged, and dead or dying were left where they fell, and retrieved next morning. Sometimes big game was obtained in the shape of a brace of wild geese, the least wary of a flock; but these only came in the severest weather.
At night the poacher's dogs embody all his senses. An old black bitch is his favourite; for years she has served him faithfully—in the whole of that time never having once given mouth. Like all good lurchers, she is bred between the greyhound and sheepdog. The produce of this cross have the speed of the one, and the "nose" and intelligence of the other. Such dogs never bark, and, being rough coated, are able to stand the exposure of cold nights. They take long to train, but when perfected are invaluable to the poacher. Upon them almost wholly depends success.
Poaching is one of the fine arts, and the most successful poacher is always a specialist. He selects one kind of game, and his whole knowledge of woodcraft is directed against it. In autumn and winter the "Otter" knows the whereabouts of every hare in the parish; not only the field in which it is but the very clump of rushes in which is its "form." As puss goes away from the prickly gorse bush, or flies down the turnip "rigg," he notes her every twist and double, and takes in the minutest details. He is also careful to examine the "smoots" and gates through which she passes, and these spots he always approaches laterally. He leaves no scent of hand nor print of foot, and does not disturb rough herbage. Late afternoon brings him home, and upon the clean sanded floor his wires and nets are spread. There is a peg to sharpen and a broken mesh to mend. Every now and then he looks out upon the darkening night, always directing his glance upward. His dogs whine impatiently to be gone. In an hour, with bulky pockets, he starts, striking across the land and away from the high-road. The dogs prick out their ears upon the track, but stick doggedly to his heels. After a while the darkness blots out even the forms of surrounding objects, and the poacher moves more cautiously. A couple of snares are set in holes in an old thorn fence not more than a yard apart. These are delicately manipulated, and from previous knowledge the poacher knows that the hare will take one of them. The black dog is sent over, the younger fawn bitch staying with her master. The former slinks slowly down the field, sticking closely to the cover of a fence running at right angles to the one in which the wires are set. The poacher has arranged that the wind shall blow from the dog and across the hare's seat when the former shall come opposite. The ruse acts, and puss is alarmed but not terrified; she gets up and goes quietly away for the hedge. The dog is crouched and anxiously watching her; she is making right for the snare, though something must be added to her speed to make the wire effective. As the dog closes in, the poacher, bowed, and with hands on knees, waits, still as death, for her coming. He hears the trip, trip, trip, as the herbage is brushed; there is a rustle among the leaves, a momentary squeal—and the wire has tightened round her throat.
Again the three trudge silently along the lane. Suddenly the trio stop and listen; then they disperse, but seem to have dissolved. The dry ditch is capacious, and its dead herbage tall and tangled. A heavy foot, with regular beat, approaches along the road, and dies slowly away in the distance.
Hares love green corn stalks, and a field of young wheat is at hand. A net, twelve feet by six, is spread at the gate, and at a given sign the dogs depart different ways. Their paths would seem soon to have converged, for the night is torn by a piteous cry, the road is enveloped in dust, and in the midst of the confusion the dogs dash over the fence. They must have found their game near the middle of the field, and driven the hares—for there are two—so hard that they carried the net right before them. Every struggle wraps another mesh about them, and soon their screams are quieted. By a quick movement the poacher wraps the long net about his arm, and, taking the noiseless sward, gets hastily away from the spot. These are the common methods of hare-poaching.
In March, when they are pairing, four or five may often be found together in one field. Although wild, they seem to lose much of their natural timidity, and now the poacher reaps a rich harvest. He is careful to set his nets and snares on the side opposite to that from which the game will come, for this reason: That hares approach any place through which they are about to pass in a zig-zag manner. They come on, playing and frisking, stopping now and then to nibble the sweet herbage. They run, making wide leaps at right angles to their path, and sit listening upon their haunches. A freshly-impressed foot-mark, the scent of dog or man at the gate, almost invariably turns them back. Of course these traces are necessarily left if the snare be set on the near side of the gate or fence, and then they refuse to take it even when hard pressed. Where poaching is prevalent and hares abundant, the keepers net every one on the estate, for it is well known to those versed in woodcraft that an escaped hare once netted can never be taken a second time in the same manner. The human scent left at gaps and gateways by ploughmen and shepherds the wary poacher will obliterate by driving sheep over the spot before he begins operations. On the sides of the fells and uplands hares are difficult to kill. This can only be accomplished by swift dogs, which are taken above the game; puss is made to run down hill, when, from her peculiar formation, she goes at a disadvantage.
Our poacher is cooly audacious. Here is an actual incident. There was a certain field of young wheat in which were some hares. The knowledge of these came by observation during the day. The field was hard by the Keeper's cottage, and surrounded